Defeat Snatched From The Jaws Of Victory
by Rel Fexive
Summary: Musings in the aftermath of 'Wolf In Sheep's Clothing.' SPOILERS for end of S3!


**Defeat Snatched From The Jaws Of Victory**

By **Rel Fexive**.

**Disclaimer:** Farscape is owned by The Henson Company, Sci-fi Channel, Hallmark Entertainment and Nine Network. Praise be to them that made it!

**Feedback:** If you have something to say, you can e-mail me at relfexive@hotmail.com.

**Archiving:** If you like it you can have it. But let me know first, eh? And tell me what you think of it too.

**Rating:** I made a guess at PG.

**Category:** Sci-Fi, Drama.

**Spoilers:** It's based on everything to date, I guess, including The Final Four. If you've not seen them DO NOT READ THIS!

**Timeframe:** Right after 'Into The Lions Den 2 - Wolf In Sheep's Clothing'.

**Summary:** Musings in the aftermath of 'Wolf In Sheep's Clothing'.

**Comments:** I was thinking about the end of that episode and the idea for this just sort of came out of that.... Wishful thinking, maybe. It's my first official fic and it's a bit short by some standards, but you can't have everything.

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He watched as the command carrier receded, the fire in it's belly slowly consuming the massive vessel. It held his attention utterly, the savage beauty of the ship slowly contracting in towards the deadly vortex of Starburst inside it.

Wreckage flew by, spat out by the carrier's death throes. Many of those fragments collided with the attendant craft of the larger ship; others passed through the multitude of escaping ships and swatted them out of existence, unaware of the lives they extinguished. The majority passed beyond, burning up in the atmosphere of the planet below or carrying the message of destruction out into the void of space.

Wormholes, wormholes.... So much lost now, right on the brink of success. They had been close, the secrets there for the taking, the knot finally unravelling as the box opened....

But those secrets were still there, being unravelled slowly totally out of his control, flowing like water out of a jug, comprehension following like enlightenment. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

Scorpius sighed. With the loss of the carrier all his hard work was as nothing. The toil of a cycle thrown into the furnace of John Crichton's hate for him, lost in a microt because of Bialar Crais. He had underestimated that one, called him a fool, but there was, at the end, more to the renegade Peacekeeper than he had ever expected. Crais sacrifice himself? For Crichton, of all people? No, he corrected himself, for revenge on him, Scorpius, who took away his life.

Revenge he understood.

"Braca," he called out. "Adjust our position, angle one seven ventral."

The stealth Marauder, his personal craft, slowly expelled fuel vapour in a specific manner, producing enough thrust to gently alter the vector of the section of shattered hull it was attached to. Nestled in a crevice between outer and inner hull it would remain unseen from all but the most direct scan sweeps. Fortunately, every craft in the vicinity was more interested in their own escape to be overly concerned with the survival of others.

The Scarren-Sebacean hybrid tore his eyes away from the mesmerising spectacle of the death of the carrier and turned away from the rear viewport. Lying comatose on the bench beside him lay Ko-Kura Strappa, the froth still caked to his lips after his convulsions in the Aurora Chair.

The project leader had been handed over to him at the last moment by a Peacekeeper still loyal to him, rescued from the Chair. The trooper had been the only member of his squad to reach him, the others all slain by fires and the quaking of the collapsing command carrier. His reward had come from the mouth of a pulse rifle; Scorpius could not afford to have anyone know he lived.

His dreams destroyed, his revenge taken even more beyond his reach then it ever had been before, he had almost given in to despair. Many times he had faced setbacks in his private war against the despised Scarrans, but never one so seemingly impossible to overcome than this. He had located Crichton in the test bay, preparing to leave; they had exchanged the release codes for their I-Yensch bracelets and freed themselves from the potential fate of the other: death.

"We were close," Scorpius murmured, repeating John's words. To unlocking the secret of wormholes? Or to each other? They were, in the end, so very similar; dedicated to wormhole research, both chasing a distant dream. The human seeking his home; for himself, revenge on those foul creatures that made him what he was.

And then John had offered him a way off, to cheat death. But his dream lying shattered all around him, he had refused, wallowing in sickening self-pity.

Scorpius tried to convince himself that it had all been a play, a performance. It had started that way, but seeing the exhausted triumph on John's face had made him forget that it was all mummery. Only when he saw Braca again, with the slumped, podgy form of Strappa beside him, had he remembered.

He stared at Strappa, on the bench beside him, one eye open and staring at the ceiling or perhaps nothing. He was alive, in the organic sense; his mind was another matter. Scorpius could only guess why he was in the chair; perhaps the intention was to erase his newly acquired knowledge of wormhole physics. But who would do it? Crichton? It seemed unlikely. Some enemy, or an agent of one, hoping to sink any chance of starting over? One thing was certain: removing him from the Chair while it was activated had blasted his mind into a thousand pieces.

There was no hope of getting anything from him ever again.

As ever, his revenge pushed him onwards. He would be patient, as always, sustaining the burning kernel of hate within him, sure in the knowledge that the Scarrans would pay for their crimes. Even if the blatant stupidity of the Council pushed the Sebacean people into a war they could not hope to win, appeasement paving the way for the inevitable Scarren offensive against a race perceived as inferior, he would continue to work to develop the only technology that could defend against them.

_Blind fools like Grazer will be the downfall of us all_ Scorpius thought to himself. _Their lack of faith will destroy them_

He could no longer work towards his goal within the Peacekeepers, that was certain. The more that the Council believed he was dead the better. And John Crichton too; together they would convince the galaxy he was no more. There were places in the Uncharted Territories where he could hide and begin again. Three things gave him hope: he had seen the glowing heart of a wormhole close up; he had seen a primitive being overcome the instabilities there in an inferior ship; and, having been so close before, he knew he could do it again.

Scorpius glanced back at the dying command carrier; a burning fragment passed leisurely overhead, the end result of the minor course correction. The death of the immense vessel was no longer so captivating as it had been before; it belonged to the past.

His mind was on the future.

FIN


End file.
